


to mock the king

by ShanaStoryteller



Category: Arthurian Mythology, The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Competent Jaskier | Dandelion, Idiots in Love, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, King Arthur AU, Multi, Secret Identity, canon-typical Geralt/Yennefer, eventually, sometimes people try and drown themselves in the fountain of youth to cope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:14:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26155582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShanaStoryteller/pseuds/ShanaStoryteller
Summary: Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, is a poet knight of Redania and the king's bastard son. Jaskier just wants to be a bard.Geralt isn't the only one trying to escape his destiny.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 144
Kudos: 1468





	to mock the king

**Author's Note:**

> title is from:  
> Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?  
> Confusion, and illusion, and relation,  
> Elusion, and occasion, and evasion?  
> I mock thee not but as thou mockest me,  
> And all that see thee, for thou art not who  
> Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art.  
> And now thou goest up to mock the King,  
> Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie.  
> \- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Idylls of the King (1856–1885), Gareth and Lynette

“You look just like your father,” his mother tells him, prideful and bitter and greedy.

Julian hates it.

~

Julian’s first seven years are golden.

They’re not perfect. His mother is distant and cold, wouldn’t hold him or nurse him as a babe and remains similarly disinterested as he grows. He has a wet nurse then a governess and a great many servants who’s job it is to prevent him from getting into too much trouble.

They do their best, but Julian is very, very good at getting into trouble.

His father kisses his cheeks and carries him on his hip, even in front of the other nobles who make their children sit stiffly with their mouths shut. His father never tells him to be quiet except when it’s really important, and he always does it gently, with gentle hands and gentle words.

He gives Julian the best tutors and lets him learn how to sing and to play the huge piano they keep in one of the side rooms that they need to hire a master to come from three cities over to tune. Julian gets sturdy clothes for playing in the yard with the gardener and silks for everything else. His father takes him into town whenever he has business there and the baker’s daughter shows him how to knead bread while his father talks to hers and the farmers laugh as they unleash him on the fields, letting him pick as many bright yellow flowers as he can carry while his father only sighs after and wipes dandelion milk from his palms. The people, his people, pinch his cheeks and call him little lord, or they’ll call him viscount if he’s testing their tempers, but his whole life is golden and bright, his future full of music and his people and his father’s love and as many dandelions as he can carry.

Mona is the governess who sticks and she runs the back of her finger against his cheek and calls him darling and tells him bedtime stories. “Tell me about the sword again,” he says, already half asleep.

Mona sighs but her voice is fond when she says, “Yes, little lord,” and runs a soothing hand down his side, trying to coax him into sleep. “A little over three hundred years ago, in our king’s castle, there was a beautiful and wicked sorceress.”

“Tissaia,” he interrupts, forcing his eyes to stay open.

“Yes, her name was Tissaia,” she says. “She served the king and had served the throne of Redania for a hundred years before that. But one day, she went into a rage. The king tried to calm her, but couldn’t, and she stole his sword from his hip and plunged it into stone floor. The blade ran red with her blood and she cast a powerful spell.”

“To make the sword sticky,” he says.

Mona taps him on the nose. “Yes, I suppose, in a way. She went mad and declared our king to be unworthy of his throne. She said that the throne of Redania was meant to be the greatest in the land, that only a king so great he could unite the whole continent, only a king _worthy_ of ruling the whole continent, would be able to pull this sword from the stone. She said the person who pulls the sword from the stone will be the true king Redania. She said that until the true king sits on the throne there will be no magic in the court of Redania, and so there hasn’t been.”

Julian is mostly asleep now, but he adds, “Because she ran away.”

“She returned to Aretuza,” she continues. “The sorceresses there said she’d died from the strain of cursing the kingdom, but that her magic held anyway. Until the sword is pulled from the stone, no mages nor sorcerers can come to court, and so it’s been ever since. The sword is still in the throne room, blood red blade and with a golden hilt.” Her voice lowers. “Some think that Tissaia lived, that she waits for the day Exalibur is pulled from the stone and she has a king to serve once more.”

Julian is smiling as he falls asleep. He loves that story.

When he’s seven years old, his father has to go on a business trip, some sort of stuffy noble affair that’ll keep him away from home for over a month. He kisses Julian goodbye three times, leaves stern instructions to his governess and tutors to keep an eye on him, and sticks his head out of the carriage to wave at Julian until he’s out of sight.

The next day his mother dismisses his governess and his tutors, and their steward goes so far to shout at her for it. In return she orders him flogged in the town square.

Julian doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“It’s okay,” he says, voice small and thick with tears. He steps in front of the steward, in front of Lyle, who’s not that much older than his father and is always too busy to play with Julian but never too busy to run his hands through his hair and smile at him. “I don’t need Mona and Jacob and Ralph,” his little heart breaks but he raises his chin, “Don’t fight. Don’t hurt Lyle.”

“Julian,” Lyle says, stricken.

“That’s Lord Pankratz to you,” his mother says harshly. “You forget your place. You’re nothing. My son is just a viscount and I am the Countess de Lettenhove,” she sounds so angry and bitter and Julian doesn’t understand. “Julian is my son and I rule this house while my husband is away. Pack up Julian’s things and then report to the alderman for your lashings.”

He wants to protest Lyle’s punishment more, but instead he stares at her. “Pack my things? Where am I going?”

“Where you _belong_ ,” she snarls. Julian stumbles back into Lyle’s legs, leans into the hand that grips his shoulder and tries to keep his tears at bay.

It’s the first but not the last time that he’s afraid of his mother.

~

Where he belongs is apparently the king’s castle. He travels with people he doesn’t know and cries the whole way, but no one wipes his tears or kisses his cheek. 

He’s brought through the castle back through to the massive training grounds. It’s filled with men and a few women fighting, training with weapons and horses. There’s so much happening and he wants to look closer but instead the man his mother had sent him with grips his arm too tightly and drags him over to an older man with grey hair and arms as thick as Julian is wide.

“Lord Commander Cador,” the man holding him says pompously and Julian rolls his eyes before he can stop himself. Cador’s lips twitch up into a smile. “I present to you for your consideration Lord Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove.”

The smile drops onto his face and this time when he looks at him Julian almost wants to shrink away, but doesn’t. “The countess is playing a dangerous game. Does Alfred know about this?”

“I am of course willing to present him to the king himself for consideration if you have any objections,” the man says, not answering the question at all.

Cador glares and runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. Fine. Fuck.”

Julian is given a small room with a lush bed and velvet curtains. His mother’s people leave but he stays and a servant comes to escort him down to dinner that night in the lower hall, not the main hall with the king and queen and court nobles eat.

It’s where the pages and squires and the training masters eat. They only move to the main hall once they’ve taken their oaths. 

He’s pushed into a seat with other boys that look his age. He stares at them and they all stare back and he opens his mouth to say something, to introduce himself maybe, but instead what he says is, “I don’t want to be a knight.”

A boy with dark skin and warm eyes laughs and says, “We’re not going to be knights for a long time. I’m Lancelot. Who are you?”

“Julian,” he says. There’s a ripple of surprise at his name, like there always is, but it’s not his fault. He didn’t ask to share the king’s name, and he knows that nobles aren’t really supposed to name their children after their royals, but it’s his _name_ and it’s not like he picked it himself.

“I’m Gawain,” says another boy who has very green eyes. “I’m going to be the best knight in the realm.”

“Not if you don’t stop dropping your arrows rather than shooting them,” another boy mutters.

Gawain gasps in outrage. “Kay! Watch your tongue.”

“Big words from someone who can’t even lift their sword properly,” pipes up a boy who Julian will learn later is Percival.

Julian smiles, some of the tension draining out of him.

He’s never had friends his age before. Maybe it won’t be too bad.

~

Julian is used to a rigorous education, having had two tutors and a governess, but the education of a future knight of Redania is comprehensive to the point of intimidation. Languages, history, math, the basics of alchemy and magics, literature, and even a whole section on customs and ethics. No music classes, but he forces himself up early and goes to the temple of Melitele on the grounds when they’re holding chorus practice and the priestesses almost smile at him when he asks to sing too and don’t say yes but don’t say no, so he stays and he sings, and it’s worth the lost sleep to sing in chorus with two dozen bright clear voices.

That would be exhausting enough all on its own, but then there’s all the physical training.

Lettenhove has stables so learning to care for horses is nice and something he mostly already knows how to do. Archery hurts his hands and he’s very bad at it. Staff training is better, it almost feels like the dances Mona used to teach him. They won’t start training with the lance until next year, which he’s grateful for, because watching the older pages crash into each other and go flying makes his heart rise to his throat.

Then there’s sword training.

Julian _loves_ the sword.

He started late, showing up half a season after the other boys, and his academics don’t suffer for it, although his archery and staff do, but not his sword. He learns eagerly and easily, until he’s besting even Bedivere, who’s a full year older than them. There’s something about the weight of it in his hands, even if it’s just a practice sword, of wielding something that’s an extension of himself and moving his feet quickly and getting close but not too close.

Cador smiles at him and its not his father’s warmth but it’s close. He still doesn’t want to be a knight, but he doesn’t get into as much trouble here, because there’s just so much to do. Julian hates being bored and here with his friends and training masters he’s never, ever bored.

He does still get in some trouble, like sneaking down to the kitchens with Gawain and Lancelot to steal still-warm pastries from kitchens, sharing their feast among the other pages and cheerfully taking their punishment of mucking out the stalls for two weeks when they’re inevitably caught.

He has so many friends here. Lancelot and Gawain are the most willing to get into mischief with him, but he has the others too, Kay and Percival and Geraint and Bors and Tristan and even Bedivere, because even though he glares at Julian viciously after he beats him, he still won’t let the other older boys make fun of him, so Julian supposes it’s okay.

Julian misses his father, but he likes his friends, likes singing with the priestesses and learning the sword, likes his classes and all his friends. He still hates archery but it seems a small sacrifice.

~

He’s been at the castle nearly two seasons and had his eighth birthday the first time he overhears someone call him the bastard prince and he doesn’t understand.

A month later he’s out training with all the pages, fighting against Bors with a blunted steel blade, when the king crosses through the yard. Julian has never seen the king before, has never laid eyes on the King Julian of Redania before this.

He’s got dark hair, a nose slightly too wide for his face, and eyes that are perfectly blue, eyes that Julian has only ever seen before looking into the mirror.

Bors drives him to his knees with his sword at his neck and Julian can’t even bring himself to mind or be irritated at his obnoxious gloating.

Later, he finds Cador and can’t look him in the face as he asks, “Is it true?”

Cador sighs and lays a heavy hand on the top of his head. “Your mother has been playing dangerous games for a very long time, boy. Don’t lose sleep over it. The Earl de Lettenhove is your father. You have his name and his love. Don’t worry about the king.”

He has _both_ his fathers’ names his realizes with a lurch. Julian from the king and Alfred from his father. “I don’t want to be a prince.”

“You’re not one,” Caldor says. “Your mother played a game and lost. King Julian didn’t claim you. Alfred did. That’s what matters.”

“He knows?” he whispers, because this is the real problem, the thing that’s actually been worrying him. “And he loves me anyway? Even though I’m not his son?”

Caldor leans over enough to look him in the eye, squeezing his shoulders tight enough that it aches, but Julian doesn’t dare complain. “Alfred knew before you were born that you weren’t his by blood and he loves you just the same. He _is_ your father, Julian, and you’re his son. Don’t forget that. Don’t let your mother make you forget that.”

Julian would never, ever do this if they weren’t alone, but he can’t help himself. He flings himself at Caldor, throwing his arms around his neck and whispering, “Thank you,” into his ear before he lets go and runs back to his room.

~

Cador loves all his students, even though perhaps he shouldn’t, but the king doesn’t care if he loves them as long as he trains them, and his pages make excellent squires and that’s all the crown cares about. He thinks he might love Julian best of all, but it’s hardly his fault.

Alfred has been one of his dearest friends since they were younger than Julian is now. Of course he heard when Lila managed to get the king into her bed, when she managed to get herself pregnant, when she gave birth to a little boy with skin too light and eyes too blue. Everyone has heard. Everyone had known. But the king had not come for his son nor the woman who had birthed him and Lila had raged.

Alfred had simply claimed the king’s son as his own and loved him as neither of his blood parents had been capable of doing. Cador hates that Julian is here at all, knows that Alfred would never send his boy to be a knight, would never send him to the king’s castle, but at least if he’s here Cador can keep an eye on him, at least if he wasn’t dragged before the king and shoved in his face the king could pretend that his bastard son isn’t on the grounds even though of course he has to know. Everyone is talking, everyone is staring, and Cador does his best to shield Julian from what he can, but he knows he can’t protect him from everything, from every whispered rumor.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much, maybe no one would care, because kings have certainly had bastards in the past, but.

King Julian is on his fourth wife. He has three daughters who died before their first year and one who died before she turned six and no other bastard children as far as court rumor is aware.

Julian is the king’s only living child, by blood if not by name.

He does his best not to think about it. Surely their new queen will give the king lots and lots of heirs and people will stop staring at Julian so much.

~

Spring melts to summer to fall. It’s the first day of winter when carriages start showing up to the castle, servants here to return pages home for the winter. For some of the older pages its for the last time since they’re joining knights as squires in the spring. Lancelot has gotten quiet as the carriages appear, and the boys don’t understand, but Julian leads them all into as much mischief as he can manage to distract him. He hopes it’s Lyle who comes to get him and not the mean man his mother had sent him here with.

It’s the third day of winter and the training grounds are covered in a thick layer of snow. It’s too warm to last, it’ll all be mud by midday, but for now he leads all the remaining pages in making a very epic snow fort, even the older ones that are nearly squires laughing at he yells at them to build the wall higher, and to do so quickly, they’re trying to beat the sun here after all.

“Julian?”

He stops, cold and wet and suddenly so, so afraid. He turns and it’s not the man from before or Lyle standing there.

It’s his father.

He looks at Julian, a look on his face that he can’t explain, and his heart is in his throat. His father keeps looking at him and then he opens his arms and Julian’s running. “Dad!” he shouts, slamming into him, wrapping his arms around his waist and pressing his face into his stomach.

“Julian,” he says, soft and pained as he returns the hug. He lowers himself so he can press kisses to Julian’s cheeks and hold his hands. “Are you okay? I came home and,” he stops, swallowing. “I wanted to come get you.”

“You couldn’t,” he says, because he knows this now. “I’m already a page. You can’t stop being a page.” Once a little boy is accepted into the knight’s service, he stays there. Julian will either complete his training and take his oaths, or – well, there is no or. Bad things happen to boys and men who go back on their word to the king.

Kay had explained it to him and hadn’t even made fun of him when he’d cried.

His father is still looking at him, still looking afraid, and Julian thinks maybe he’s afraid for the same reason Julian had been. So he hugs him again and whispers in his ear, “I don’t want to be a prince. I’m Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove.”

The next hug crushes the air from his lungs, but Julian can’t bring himself to mind. “Yes,” his father says, “you are.”

~

His mother doesn’t have any servants anymore. Julian notices this but doesn’t question it, notices how she gets no new dresses or jewels, how she hosts no dinners or parties, and says nothing. His mother is angrier than ever but satisfied too, and he doesn’t understand, exactly. He’s never been close with his mother, exactly, but now he avoids her, now he hates the way she looks at him. Sending Julian to become the king’s page had clearly been worth it to her.

When he comes home, he runs to Lyle and hugs him and pats his back, like he can feel wounds that are three seasons old, and Lyle ruffles his hair and smiles and says nothing about the lashings he took for trying to keep Julian home.

Ralph comes back for the winter to continue teaching him music and is impressed with his singing voice, looks a little bit shocked when Julian tells him that he practices with Melitele’s priestesses but only nods before getting him back to work on the piano, and then the harp when he notices the new callouses on his hands from training, saying something about putting those callouses to work.

~

In the spring, he returns to the castle. Lancelot has bruises even though it’s the first day and they haven’t even started training yet.

After that, Lancelot doesn’t go home for the winter.

Lancelot learns to love Lettenhove almost as much as Julian does.

~

Julian is thirteen when he becomes a squire.

Cador had worried. Alfred has accepted that his son will be a knight, but Julian hasn’t accepted that, not really. He still doesn’t want to be a knight. He’s the best student in his year, excelling in everything except archery, where he’s still very, very good, but Cador worries about how he’ll do on the road, with a knight master who’s expecting a student that doesn’t sing quite so much or who breaks out his lute at every opportunity, one who doesn’t write sweet poetry and has not yet figured out how to stop loving every person he meets.

Julian is brilliant and bright, is exactly what their land would hope for their future prince to be. As much as Cador doesn’t want to see him leave with a knight master who doesn’t understand him, he also needs Julian out of the castle in case the king takes an interest in the bastard son he’s ignored for thirteen years.

He’s on his sixth wife. He has one daughter who’s four and maybe if this was Cintra that would be enough. But it’s not Cintra, it’s Redania, and Julian is still the king’s only son if not his only child.

Knights have already starting arriving at court to pick squires and he’s gotten plenty of offers for Julian. Of course he has. He’s the most skilled page in their year and the king’s bastard son. But he doesn’t give answers to any of them, says he’ll discuss it with Julian, and hasn’t decided which one will be the best of the bad lot.

Agravaine arrives in the middle of the night and goes straight to his room. Cador can’t even get mad at him for it because he may outrank Agravaine but the man is twenty years his senior and used to squash him into the mud back when he was a page. “Why?” he asks tiredly, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

Agravaine just grins at him. “You know a priestess of Melitele came to me and said there was a boy I should take on? I didn’t think priestesses got involved in this sort of thing, but she said something about the boy’s singing voice. Mad, the lot of them. I can’t think of any knight hopeful who’d want to attach himself to me. I’m past my prime and teach at Oxenfurt half the year, you know.”

If he were younger or less sober, Cedor would kiss him. “Julian,” he says, “is going to love you.”

By the look on his face, Agravaine hadn’t known that the boy the Melitele priestess had sent him after was the bastard son of their king. But he just goes, “Well, fuck,” and then says, “Are you going to offer me a drink and tell me about my new squire or just gape at me?”

~

Julian had worried about being a squire, because being a page was fun because it had all of his friends, because Lancelot was his brother in every way that mattered and the castle was _fun_ even with all the glances people always gave him. But being a squire would just be him and a knight and awful lot of work.

Instead he gets Agravaine.

Agravaine talks to his father and then enrolls him at Oxenfurt, saying, “I’ll teach you the sword and the staff and we’ll have quite a lot of work to do come summer, but for now there’s no better place for you.”

Julian thrives at Oxenfurt, plowing through the general classes thanks to his education as a page and shining as brightly her as he had as a page as he learns even more, as he picks up Elder with a quickness that leaves his professor gaping and learns to write better poetry and how to play even more instruments. His voice richens and deepness but he still sneaks into Melitele’s temple to sing, and their sisters must talk, because he’s barely introduced himself before they’re ignoring him, before they’re letting him sing in their hall and letting his voice echo off the walls. His singing and speech professors go a little starry eyed whenever he performs and he doesn’t drink because he’s still technically a squire and Agravaine will box him around the ears if he tries, but he’s drunk on it all anyway.

He gains more friends, Essi and Shani and for a brief time even Valdo, before he reveals himself to be such an ass.

The summers and autumns are spent doing traditional squire work, spent going out in the wilderness with Agravaine and lending a hand as knight of Redania, policing borders and providing order to little middle of nowhere towns and slaying the monsters that an old knight and a young squire are capable of slaying. They attend tournaments and Julian faces more knights than he should, knights who are curious about the king’s bastard son and not at all curious about Julian, about Agravaine’s squire and a top student from Oxenfurt and the son of the Earl of Lettenhove.

When he’s seventeen, he graduates the top of his class from Oxenfurt.

When he’s eighteen, he returns to the castle where he’s spent his youth and takes his oaths with his brothers, with Lancelot, Gawain, Kay, Percival, Geraint, Bors and Tristan, and Bedivere isn’t there because he became a fully fledged knight last spring but they all toast to him anyway, because he’s still one of theirs.

The king taps his shoulders with the flat of his blade and Julian can see everyone’s eyes on them, knows that as he kneels in front of him that there’s no mistaking them for anything but what they are.

Julian looks just like the king, from his jaw to his nose to his bright blue eyes. He looks into his own eyes as the king pronounces him, “Sir Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove and knight of Redania.”

When he steps back, his eyes catch at the sword plunged halfway into the stone floor next to the throne. He’s never been in the throne room before and he does his best not to stare too obviously.

Excalibur looks just like the stories Mona told him. A blood red blade and a glittering golden hilt with the ruby in the center. It glitters so invitingly in the torchlight and Julian takes another deliberate step further away from it.

It’s traditional, almost, for young knights to try their luck pulling the sword from the stone.

Julian doesn’t try and no one ask him to.

That night, Julian gets drunk for the first time in his life.

“Well,” Kay says, throwing an arm over his shoulder, “where are you going to go now?”

“Go?” he asks, pretending he doesn’t know what they mean.

Geraint and Bors threaten to hold him upside down and beat him but he only laughs.

“Come on,” Gawain whines while Lancelot looks fond and Percival looks like he regrets knowing any of them. “What’s the plan?”

Julian considers lying, because his plan does not exactly fall in line with the orders he’s just taken, but doesn’t. They’re his brothers.

“Come find me if there’s a war on,” he says, smiling.

“And how will we find you?” Tristan demands.

His smile melts into a smirk, thinking of being a little boy with fistfuls of dandelions. “Well, look for the famous bard known as Jaskier, of course.”

They all groan and laugh and none of them try and convince him to do otherwise.

They’ve all known him since he was seven years old, after all, and they know better than that.

Julian has never wanted to be a knight.

~

Geralt is leaving Posada and for some reason there’s a chattering bard at his side and for the life of him he can’t figure out _why_ or how this even happened. He’d fully intended to leave the bard behind in Posada. 

Jaskier doesn’t make any sense. He’s not afraid of him for one thing, hadn’t been afraid of much of anything, even when the elves had them tied up and were threatening to kill him Geralt had only sensed nervousness underneath all the sputtering. He talks like an idiot, but he moves like a fighter, has strength in his limbs and his clumsiness falls away to grace seemingly whenever he forgets to hide it. He wears clothes that only a noble would be caught dead in, is clearly educated by the quickness of his words and wears silver on his hands, but barely has two coins to rub together.

And he’s following Geralt, which is the most baffling thing of all.

Or well, perhaps the most baffling thing is that Geralt is letting him. He eyes Jaskier warily across their shared campsite. Even as strange and annoying as the bard is, Geralt isn’t going to abandon him on the road when all he has for the protection is the daggers he keeps in his boots that Geralt’s not totally convinced he can use, at least not well enough to defend himself against more than a half starved bandit.

Jaskier usually strums at his lute and sings when they stop for the night, no matter how many times Geralt tells him to shut up. Jaskier always puts it away before his temper really gets frayed, and the most disconcerting part of that is that Jaskier is able to read him well enough to tell the difference. But he’s not playing now. Instead he’s lying too close to the fire with a stack of parchment and a quill with the ink bottle as far away as he can get it while still keeping it in arm’s reach so the heat from the fire doesn’t dry it out. He’s been writing for over an hour, which isn’t that unusual, except it’s not in his thick leather journal but on loose paper.

“What are you doing?” he asks finally when glaring at him doesn’t seem to produce any sort of reaction at all.

Jaskier’s lifts his head to blink at him. “What?”

Geralt hates repeating himself. “What are you writing?”

“Oh, letters to my friends. I’ll post them in the next town,” he says easily. “Respect doesn’t make history, but this isn’t history, it’s correspondence.”

He frowns. “You’re telling them about Filavandrel?”

“Mm,” he nods. He must notice something in Geralt’s tone or his face because he rolls his eyes. “What’s wrong now?”

“You’ll tell the truth to your friends but not in your songs?” he growls.

“I tell the truth where it will do the most good,” he says tartly. “The greater populace of elf hating, meat headed idiots do not need to hear about how Filavandrel and his ilk are weak and hungry and hiding and merciful. That will only encourage them to go and try to finish them off. No, rumors of them being strong and terrible are much more useful for them now.”

That’s surprisingly clever of the bard and Geralt tries not to look as impressed as he feels. “Then why are you telling these friends of yours?”

“My friends are, uh,” he looks down and flushes. “I know people who have influence, and I trust them not to abuse this knowledge or spread it indiscreetly, so I’ll tell them the truth and maybe they can do some good with it.”

Other nobles, Geralt guesses, if that’s what Jaskier is rather than just coming from money or lucking into a proper education. Probably he’s writing nobles even if he’s not one himself, having met them during whatever kind of education produced someone like Jaskier. “You trust them with this truly? How do you know that they’re who you think they are? Besides, even if they are, mail can intercepted.”

Jaskier doesn’t get upset, just smiles at him. “Here.” He hands over one of the letters he’s written and Geralt comes closer to take it. It seems rude to read a letter meant for one of Jaskier’s friends, but he wouldn’t have handed it to him if he’d minded him reading it.

Geralt only has to stare at it a second before a smile crooks the corners of his lips that he has to force down. The scribbles are unrecognizable. “It’s in code.”

Knowing code complicated enough that Geralt can’t read it at first glance is making Geralt more and more sure that this strange bard isn’t a lowly commoner.

“It’s in code,” he repeats. “And even if someone deciphered it, I don’t say anything outright, just a bunch of references to our youth that no one but them will understand. I trust them because I grew up with them. Do you have brothers, Geralt?”

He thinks of Eskel and Lambert and all the other witchers who are long dead and the combination of warmth and grief in his chest isn’t unfamiliar, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. He considers lying but can’t think of a reason as to why, not with all the things about himself that Jaskier has just shared. “Yeah.”

“These boys are my brothers in all but blood,” he says. “I grew up with them. I know them. They won’t disappoint me.”

His heartbeat and his voice are steady and Geralt only nods, because even if it’s not true, Jaskier believes it is, believes it down to his bones, and there’s nothing he can say against that.

~

They finally arrive in the next town, one where there are rumors of men going missing, and Jaskier follows him into the inn – which, it’s a public inn, it’s not like Geralt can stop him – and his bright chatter finally comes to an end when the innkeeper snarls, “Out of here, mutant, no room for kind like yours.”

Fuck. This town only has the one inn. He turns around but doesn’t get far because for some reason there’s a hand on his chest, holding him back with surprising strength. Not enough to stop him if he forced it, but more than he’d been expecting from the bard, even with the graceful way he sometimes moved. Most nobles, which this kid almost definitely is even if he has to be pretty low ranked to be making his way as a broke bard, have basic training in the more courtly weapons, but few have the strength to actually make that sparse training anything more than mostly useless.

“Good sir,” Jaskier says and Geralt is glad he’s facing away from everyone because he can’t help but wince at the sound. The strain and anger underneath his seemingly cheerful words are grating to his ears after two days of the bard’s light voice. He thinks that if this is what Jaskier sounds like when he’s masking his anger, then maybe everything he’s said since he’d met Geralt had been genuine. Which is baffling to contemplate. “Is that anyway to speak to the fine witcher who’s come to rid you of your monster problem?”

“Trading a monster for a monster still leaves us with a fucking monster, doesn’t it?” the innkeeper growls.

Geralt doesn’t sigh, but only because Jaskier’s hand is still against his chest and he’d be able to feel it if he did.

“If you would also say that a cure is worse than a disease, then I suppose so,” he says. “Or are those pockmarks on your face some sort of fashion statement? It seems as if they’re perhaps signs something tried to kill you and you survived it because you received a cure. Did you throw the doctor from your inn because you did not find the manner of application of his treatments to be agreeable?”

Geralt isn’t totally following the metaphor here, since pox and whatever treatments may be needed for it aren’t really a concern of his, but he glances around the inn and notices there are several people with tell tale marks on their faces and can’t help but nudge his estimation of the bard up a little bit. He hadn’t noticed until Jaskier pointed it out.

There’s a heavy, loaded silence, then the innkeeper says, “Fine. But I don’t want any trouble.”

That can’t be right. People have kicked him out of plenty of inns but none have ever changed their minds about it.

“Thanks but no thanks!” Jaskier says cheerfully and Geralt can’t help but let out a growl. Jaskier’s hand twitches against his chest but he keeps it where it is and still doesn’t smell afraid. “I don’t give my coin to prejudiced assholes.”

Then he’s shoving Geralt out of the inn and he doesn’t know why he lets him, because he’s certainly not strong enough to move Geralt if he doesn’t want to be moved, but he finds himself outside and scowling while Jaskier for some reason looks supremely pleased with himself. “Jaskier, what the hell?”

“Oh, don’t look like that, we weren’t going to give that bigot our money, not after what he said to you.”

“If I didn’t give my coin to people who hate witchers I’d never sleep inside again,” he points out. He can’t bring himself to get that angry about the whole thing because it’s not like he’s any worse off than if Jaskier hadn’t been here. And he had defended him, he thinks, which is. New. “If you were trying to help you should have quit while you were ahead.”

Jaskier frowns at him. “I wasn’t trying to help.” Unbelievable. “I was proving a point, obviously. But if you’re asking me for help, I’m happy to provide it!”

He’s already striding off, proving he can move annoyingly quickly when he wants to when Geralt tries to grab his arm and misses. “Jaskier, don’t-”

“Just stay there and brood!” he calls over his shoulder. “You’re so good at it!”

He does not smile and even if he did it’s not like anyone’s looking at him to see it.

Jaskier walks up to a young boy selling flowers on the corner, either an orphan or with parents too poor to send him to school or keep him home. He’s on the other side of the street and several buildings down and no human would be able to hear him, but Geralt’s not human, and, if he concentrates, he can hear Jaskier as well as if he was standing next to him. “My good lad! You look like an industrious sort of fellow who knows all the good gossip.”

The boy gives Jaskier a frown so firm that Geralt knows he has to be holding back a smile. Jaskier seems to know it too by the way his grin gets impossibly wider. “What you be wanting to know?”

“All these poor men that have been killed by the monster. Did any of them leave behind any widows?”

What the fuck.

After getting several names and other related information, Jaskier gives the boy a huge wink and pulls one of his silver rings off his finger and tosses it to him. The boy’s face slackens in shock and if Geralt didn’t have such a good control he’s sure his face would look much the same. The silver in the ring, even if it’s just plated, is likely worth more money than the boy has ever had in his life. “For goods and services rendered,” Jaskier says, bending down to pluck one of the flower bunches from the boy’s bucket and walking back over to Geralt.

“Jaskier,” he says, but stops, because he’s honestly not sure where to even begin with everything he just witnessed.

“Found us a place to sleep, probably,” he says cheerfully, then holds the colorful orange bouquet out to him. “Horses like daylilies, right? If my winning personality can’t get your horse to like me, I’m more than willing to resort to bribery.”

He keeps shaking the bouquet in Geralt’s face until he takes it from him and what he ends up saying, holding the stems of the flowers probably too delicately because he’s afraid of crushing them, is, “It’s not a very effective bribe if she thinks it’s coming from me.”

“Well, she won’t let me get close enough to give them to her,” he says reasonably, “so you’ll just have to give them to her for me and tell her they’re from me and that I think she’s a lovely, beautiful lady and I’d like it very much if she didn’t try and bite me anymore.”

Geralt shakes his head, but tucks the flowers into his pack to give them to Roach later. He leaves them poking out so as not to crush them, which is pointless because they’re just going to be a snack for Roach later, but he does it anyway.

Jaskier leads them to one widow’s house, then another, and it’s late in the night by the time they get to the third woman’s house, and Geralt is just bewildered. Jaskier speaks to them briefly, being appropriately sympathetic and asks them several insightful questions about the monster that killed their husbands, and the widows don’t have information but it’s not for lack of trying. From what little they do know, it sounds like a manticore. Geralt’s surprised Jaskier knows the right questions to ask, but he supposes that’s a useful skill for someone to have when they’ve decided to make a career out of being a nosy bastard. It’s nothing less than he’d be doing on his own, and the women certainly talk to Jaskier far easier than they would him, which is the only reason he follows him and doesn’t complain.

“Jaskier,” he says, “we’re going to have to make camp for the night soon. We can continue asking questions in the morning.”

“We, hm?” he teases and Geralt realizes his mistake and glares at him, like it’s his fault that Geralt forgot that he was planning to lose the damn bard in this town. “I’d really rather not spend the night on the ground again.”

“Then you shouldn’t have pissed off the innkeeper after he offered you a bed,” Geralt says dryly.

Jaskier waves a hand. “The night is young, my dear, and may yet bear fruit.”

Geralt has no idea what he’s talking about.

They speak to two more widows and the moon is well and truly high in the sky at this point and even Jaskier’s good cheer is beginning to flag, although no one would notice by the bows and flourishes he greets everyone with, pulling smiles out of exhausted and grieving family members. It’s a skill all on its own, although if he doesn’t want people to know he’s a noble, he should probably tone it down. He’s trying to be funny and charming with his courtly manners in this town in the middle of nowhere, where the lack of multiple inns has more to do with the lack of foot traffic than the lack of population. But his bows are picture perfect and his elegant gestures are practiced. These people don’t know the difference between someone mocking courtly manners and displaying them, but Geralt does, and the only reason a bard as young as Jaskier would have those manners would be if he grew up using them, if he grew up at court.

Geralt should probably tell him that. Maybe in another decade he can pass it off from saying he’s played at courts, whether he has or not, but for now it’s just a tell of his upbringing.

They go up to another woman’s house, this one on a farm large enough that it clearly supports the town rather than just a family. There’s even a separate building off to the side where all the workers sleep, with a comparatively modest house that must belong to the farm’s owners. The woman who answers the door is younger than Geralt expected. Her face is unlined and the full skirt and tight blouse with short puffy sleeves she’s wearing is the style favored by younger peasant women and does little to hide the generous curves of her stomach and chest and around her chin. She looks soft to the touch, like Geralt could sink his hands into her without breaking her.

Her dark eyes widen when they see Geralt, but she doesn’t flinch or slam the door in their faces, which is what all the other widows had done. Jaskier brightens, suddenly regaining all his energy as he bows at the waist. “My dear, I’m terribly sorry to hear of your loss. I’m the bard Jaskier, and this is my companion, Geralt of Rivia, the white wolf, who’s here to rid your town of this monster.”

Her gaze is careful and not charmed at all. He’d smile if he didn’t know it would frighten her.

“That’s good news,” she says, “although it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here in the middle of the night.”

Geralt expects Jaskier to go into the same questions he’d been asking all the others, but instead he says, “Ah, well, you see, we had a spot of trouble with the innkeeper, as he’s a ghastly and unpleasant sort of fellow, and we were hoping you had a spare room in your worker’s quarters that we could sleep in tonight? Or even some spare floor. We can, of course, pay.”

Her face doesn’t change at all. “The innkeeper is my brother.”

Fuck.

Jaskier’s smile doesn’t budge. “Then it seems as if you are owed my condolences twice over, dear lady.”

Geralt can’t believe he just said that. This young widow is going to beat Jaskier to death with his own lute and Geralt’s going to let her.

Well. Maybe he won’t let her, exactly, but she certainly deserves to get a swing or two in, at least.

Instead of getting upset, her lips twitch up at the corners. “I’m afraid, dear bard, that if my foreman wakes up to see a witcher under the same roof as him, I’ll either be down a foreman or you’ll be down a witcher. The rest of my boys will have similar reactions, but really it’s Georgie you have to look out for.”

Jaskier deflates. “Ah, I see.”

Normally he wouldn’t ask, but she hasn’t slammed the door in their faces, hasn’t cursed them out, hasn’t even just told them no, and she’s cautious, with two strange men in front of her, but she’s not afraid. Or, well. Not afraid like people are usually afraid of him. Besides, Jaskier had said he hadn’t wanted to sleep on the ground tonight, and Geralt’s pretty sure he won’t agree to stay here while Geralt finds a place to camp. “I’d take some space in your stables, if you can spare it.”

“Are you an animal?” she asks, quickly enough that her snark is probably more reflex than derision.

“Obviously he’s not!” Jaskier says, affronted.

Geralt puts a hand on his shoulder. She’s not insulting him, he doesn’t think, although it’s not quite light hearted enough to count as teasing. “No.”

Some of her caution is edging towards the fear when she asks, “Are you a monster?”

Geralt squeezes Jaskier’s shoulder before he can do more than make an offended sound in the back of his throat. “Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you,” she says, her voice steady even though he can hear how quickly her heart is beating.

“Sometimes,” he allows.

For some reason that answer relaxes her. “Aren’t we all,” she sighs. “You’re not a cat, are you?”

Jaskier’s confusion is palpable but several things make sense all at once. “No. A wolf.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” she says. “If you were a cat I’d send you to sleep in the barn. One came through a couple years ago. Left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, including my brother’s.”

“But not yours?” he asks.

“Oh, mine too,” she assures. “But he was just an unpleasant man and the continent has plenty of those. Not any more monstrous than any other man I’ve known.”

Men can be plenty monstrous. But witchers don’t tend to be, not like that. Any who are like that are killed by their brothers before they can make the witchers’ reputation worse than it already is. That said, cats have been known to take contracts out on people, and Geralt assumes whatever witcher last came through here must have killed the wrong person.

“Put your horse in the stable,” she says. “I have a floor and you and your bard are welcome to it.”

Geralt tries to remember he hit his head at any point today and even Jaskier can’t hide his surprise. “In – in your home?”

She shrugs. “If you wanted to hurt or kill me, you’d hardly need to wait until I was asleep to do it. I can only assume, then, that you’re truly just after a place to sleep for the night. Or are you planning to rob me blind and slit my throat?”

“My lady!” Jaskier cries, putting a hand to his chest.

The young widow finally gives him a tired smile. “As I thought,” she says and then turns and walks back inside, leaving the door open.

Jaskier looks at him, but Geralt only shrugs and goes to put Roach in the stable. If someone is willing to give him a warm place to sleep, he’s not going to argue with them about it.

The door is still open when he goes back and he carefully shuts it behind him. The kitchen table has been pushed to the side and two bedrolls that are so thick they can’t be meant for traveling are laid out on the ground in front of the hearth as well as pile of patchwork blankets and pillows. It’s just a spot on the floor, really, but it somehow manages to look more inviting than the beds of some the nicer inns he’s stayed at. There’s a kettle over the fire and a bucket and several rags so that they can wipe themselves down before going to sleep, and just seeing it makes all the dust and grime suddenly itchy on his skin. Jaskier is speaking to the widow in the kitchen, his doublet off and that same charm in his voice that he always has. She’s smiling when she looks over Jaskier’s shoulder and catches his eye, and he expects the smile to slip away, but it stays.

She pats Jaskier on the shoulder and says, “Tea’s in the cupboard. Help yourself and let me know if you need anything.”

“Your generosity is boundless,” he says dramatically and she snorts even as a flush crosses her cheeks.

That flush fades as she continues looking at him, as does the smile. He doesn’t shift his weight out of long practice, just waits for whatever she feels the need to say to him. “My husband was a good man,” she says finally, which hadn’t been what he was expecting. “We have few enough of those as it is. We can’t afford to lose anymore to whatever’s in those woods.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he says, because he will. He’s a witcher. It’s his job.

She nods, pushing her shoulders back, as if his words are all she needs to believe it. “Goodnight Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier the bard,” she says before disappearing behind a door at the end of the hall.

“Here,” Jaskier says, lifting a plate that he hadn’t noticed. There’s thick bread and hard cheese and salted meats, and Geralt remembers all at once that he hasn’t eaten since this morning.

Later, when they’re both laying in the soft bedrolls and clean as they can get without a proper bath, Geralt can’t bring himself to give into tiredness pulling at him. “Jaskier.”

“Hm?” he asks, half asleep as he turns to face Geralt, looking especially young in the flicking firelight.

He doesn’t want to ask but he has to know. “This is what you meant when you said you were going to find us a place to sleep before going to talk to all those widows, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” he says agreeably. “Worked too.”

“How did you know it would?” he asks.

Jaskier seems a little more awake now as he shrugs. “It always does eventually. Honestly Geralt, one grumpy innkeeper and you were ready to write off the whole town as being as awful and bigoted as he was. Do you always do that? Find one loud asshole and assume everyone else agrees with him?”

“It’s usually several if not several dozen loud assholes,” he points out. “You had to speak to five widows, who have personal reasons to want a witcher here and are in need of coin besides that, to find one who you felt you could even ask.” Because he understands now that’s what Jaskier had been doing, using his clever questions as a cover for what he was really after, which had been someone who might be willing to offer a witcher a place to sleep for the night.

“Well.” Geralt can see his frown clearly. “Alright, perhaps there are quite a lot of awful people around, generally, I’ll give you that one. But I found one I could ask, and looks what it got us.” The fire crackles cheerfully as if to emphasize his point. “I realize you’re so busy being grumpy and broody that you don’t notice, but there are kind people everywhere. You just have to be willing to look for them.”

It’s such a young, naïve thing to say that Geralt instantly has a derisive response on the tip of his tongue, except.

Except.

They’re here, warm and clean and comfortable and fed, because of Jaskier, and it’s hard to argue with that.

“I didn’t have to look for you,” he says instead and then immediately considers smothering himself into his pillow. 

Even if he couldn’t see Jaskier’s face turn red, he wouldn’t be able to ignore the uptick in his heartbeat. “No,” he agrees, “but that’s because you’ve got it backwards. You didn’t find me. I found you.” 

Geralt grunts and turns his face into his pillow to hide his smile. He stays awake until Jaskier’s breathing settles into sleep, then shifts enough that he can see him again, wondering if he stares at him long enough the bard will start making sense.

He falls asleep just as bewildered by Jaskier as before but can’t bring himself to mind too much.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!
> 
> feel free to follow / harass me at: shanastoryteller.tumblr.com
> 
> edit: the fluctuating chapter count reflects both my outline and my emotional state


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